Network management may be conducted at different levels in various types of optical networks to avoid network failures and to assure network performance. In a communication network, an element management system (EMS) may be used to supervise and manage network elements within a network. A communication network may also include a network management system (NMS) to manage the overall network by communicating with several EMSs.
In an optical communication system such as a wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) system, for example, terminal or cable stations may be interconnected by cable segments to form a network. The network elements in an optical communication system may include equipment located at a cable station (e.g., terminal equipment and power feed equipment, computers, phones, printers and so on) as well as equipment connected to the cable station (e.g., repeaters and equalizers). In such a system, an EMS may be located at a cable station (or at a separate location) and used to manage the network elements associated with this cable station. The EMS may include one or more servers for performing the element management functions and one or more workstations for providing a user interface (e.g., to display the information associated with the network elements managed by the EMS). An NMS may be located at one of the cable stations or at a separate location for managing the overall optical communication system or network.
Provisioning of the network elements in an optical communication system is often complicated by the number of different types of equipment and equipment models. Any misconfiguration, such as a conflicted internet protocol (IP) address, may lead to a loss of connectivity to that network element, or worse yet, to entire segments of an optical communication system. Therefore, initial provisioning and on-going maintenance (e.g., adding new devices, replacing defective device) of an optical communication system raises numerous non-trivial challenges.